Due to the new European data protection law, we need your consent before you use our website:

We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver
personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your
interests. By clicking “I agree” below, you consent to the use by us and our third-party partners of
cookies and data gathered from your use of our platforms. See our Privacy Policy
and Third Party Partners to learn
more about the use of data and your rights. You also agree to our
Terms of Service.

Trump favorably compared Puerto Rico’s death toll to Hurricane Katrina. A study now says twice as many died in Puerto Rico.

During a visit to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico on Oct. 3, President Trump told Puerto Rican officials they should be “very proud” that hundreds didn’t die as in a “real catastrophe like Katrina.” (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

President Trump's never-ending quest for credit and his lack of foresight got the better of him in Puerto Rico.

TRUMP: We've saved a lot of lives. If you look at the — every death is a horror. But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous — hundred and hundred and hundreds of people that died. And you look at what happened here with really a storm that was totally overpowering. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. And what is your death count at this point, 17?

PUERTO RICO GOV. RICARDO ROSSELLÓ: Sixteen, certified.

TRUMP: Sixteen people, certified — 16 people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people.

“Sixteen versus literally thousands of people.” The count now, according to Harvard, is 4,645 vs. 1,833. More than twice as many people died because of Maria than Katrina, per the Harvard study.

This won't be the final word on the matter. A George Washington University study that Rosselló commissioned is due out in a few weeks, and to some degree this comes down to how deaths are tallied. As The Washington Post's article notes, it includes “health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill” after the storm (the U.S. territory experiences significant infrastructure problems, including, most notably, with its electrical grid). But the researchers found a 62 percent increase in the island's mortality rate, compared with 2016.

All of this seems a little crass, of course. Comparing the number of people who died all these months later to show Trump was wrong will undoubtedly rub his supporters the wrong way. But this is an argument that Trump put forward himself while repeatedly making the case that his hurricane response was successful. This was the statistic he chose to focus on, and now it tells precisely the opposite story that he had hoped. He used the death toll as a measure of success, relative to Katrina, and now it looks more like a measure of how the response has come up short.